True Alternatives to Conquering the World

[angelus512]

I deeply apologise if this post has already been done. I seem to be posting a lot lately.

But its my suggestion that in Civ4 the game completely undergoes an overhaul to remove the focus on aggression and world domination as the legitimate path to winning.

Civ3 took minor steps in that direction, culture, diplomacy etc but they were poorly executed and ended up just being poor substitutes for a world domination strategy. Lets face it in all civ games thus far world domination via military force has been the ONLY way to play the game, with other routes in civ3 being weak weak and mostly unfun alternatives.

I feel civ4 needs to provide genuine and interesting alternative pathways. Like for example suppose Diplomatic victory is still a factor in civ4. Make it so that when countries love you (because your moving towards a diplo victory), they are far far more inclined to declare war on your aggressors, or give you cheap deals, or perhaps "lend" you military units of their own for multilateral forces when the time arrises.

Or suppose you go for culture victory. This isn't thought out btw so it might sound weird...
But maybe work in the whole terrorist thing we've got plaguing the world these days. Except not terrorists.
because your country is SOOO reverred by all, population immigrates to your wonderful country at random, people in other governments turn traitor and give you techs' (ala cold war america v USSR).
Military units turn sides occasionally and somehow this could be tied into world religion thing i'm sure.
Just some MINOR ideas there.

But ultimately the finger i'm pointing is for civ4 to have TRUE pathways to victory that don't have to involve you having this all overwhelming army which at times becomes monotonous and downright "been done".

 

[Che Guava]

I like you thoughts on cultural victory! I do think that more focus needs to be put on how the world sees on on the international stage and people should flock to your empire when its culture is booming.

As for countries 'loving you' and therefore giving you support, I agree with you that this should be more common, but maybe not in the mechanism you propose. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think that no nation ever really gives up anything without having at least somewhat selfish intentions. You could chalk this up to 'I'll help them now and they'll help me later' attitude, but I think to get other civ's to come to your aid without an M.P.P. you need more tangiable benefits. Basically, I'd just like to see more REAL dependence on other nations around you: if germany attacks france and england bets involved, it's not because the english are staunch admireres of french culture, it's because france is trading england wines for furs, horses for iron, and wheat for gold, and if that supply is interupted, the english economy might seriously nosedive!

No man is an island, and no civilization should be either...

 

[mastertyguy]

Me too I agree. I would like to have better deals, or a REAL advantage of being honest. The score too should change. If you are peaceful, you can't get territory, and you can't get score. Culture and international favor HAVE to be in score for civ4. This is a good way to stop absolute warmongering. As I am not one, prefering honesty to war at all price, I would like to get more advantages from staying at peace, and being honest and clean. Now, you can do RoP rape and the only thing you get is you get disgracied by the other. But you get all ennemy territory, surprising them to the upmost.

 

[dh_epic]

I think your heart's in the right place...

The most important thing to having true alternatives to conquering the world is that there has to be some things that war can't do.

Right now, war can help you with your spaceship because war gets you more cities pumping out more spaceship parts. War can help you with your culture because you get more cities pumping out more culture.

In reality, war is helpful, yes. And you can't be a successful nation without at least a good national defence (to say nothing of aggression). But sometimes conquest is a detriment to aspects of your nation's life. Your national stability and unity. The amount that you're loved around the world, and thus the love of your culture, and the amount of trade partners.

If you can seperate war strategy from at least one other strategy, then you'd have a true choice.

 

[sir_schwick]

War is the best strategy in Civ 3 with this arithmetic:

Reward for Success - Cost of Operation = Profit of System

War has been common in human history because the cost of operation was a lot smaller than being peaceful. Peace implies cooperation, compromise and competition. In the twentieeth century several things have increased the cost of war considerably. The avaliability of firearms and military vehicles; the rise of nationalism globally; the weight of international trade. Here are my suggestions on how to make a game where victory involves a more holistic strategy of which war is just an arm:

Trade:

The reward for trade is miniscule and almost insignificant in Civ 3. Also the oppurtunity cost is large considering you can much more easily take that resource than trade for it. Making sustained trade much more profitable would encourage strategies where expansion was an option for success, not the option for success.

War:

Currently the costs of waging war are miniscule. Occupation needs are a joke and logistics are a joke. Often the expensive part of wars is cleaning up the mess and trying to establish order. After nationalism is discovered it becomes much more difficult to rule over foreigners. Also, waging war requires logistical support that does detract from the economy.

Hybrid Solution:

Currently economic vitality and military vitality are not linked at all. Moving hundreds of tanks and aircraft across your rails and airports seems to have no effect on your economy. Traffic magically disappears and the trains run all their normal routes too. A good way to balance that would be that moving your military around does take away from your economy. Large movements will be detrimental, so the reward better be worth the short-term price.

Right now that sounded abstract, which it was. There is a good thread on RR Capacity which describes my concepts in detail. As summary, your RR, roads, and harbors now do not confer bonuses by their sheer existence. Instead your capacity, which is built or determined, is what is moving over the routes you created. Normally industry and commerce demand use of this capacity, but the military gets first priority.

 

[Graadiapolistan]

A "complete rehaul" goes too far, i think that different modes of play should well, come into play. Like AI agression, on low it would be cultural and diplomatic, on high it would be all war. In normal It would be less dependant on war as civ 3, but still have a realistic amount of war

 

[Che Guava]

EXACTLY! the cost of war is non-existant in civIII. I find, when waging war i actually get more scientific advances, money and respect than when I'm at peace (as long as I'm not rep/dem) Occupation of foreign soil should be much more costly and attacks on your units by everyday citizens should be a fact. How could you possibly rule a city with a population of 500 000 with one pikeman unit???

 

[whereagles]

1 pikeman = 1 division (3000 men)

 

[Yuri2356]

1 pikeman = 1 division (3000 men)

3000 men with pointy sticks rolleyes:), vs 500 000 armed with fresh fruit( )

I have to go with the people on this one.

 

[angelus512]

Overhaul was perhaps a strong word. At the time i was trying to convey the fact that in all civs so far I feel that all the options that weren't including me being at war with somebody were ultimately just....well distracting me from being at war with somebody.

Everything in civ so far ultimately builds or points towards war as the final solution essentially. Whereas in the real world it doesn't entirely work that way.

Don't get me wrong i love going to war with a civilization but i guess what i'm getting at is i wish i had the choice not too and hurt them some other way.
Like in some situations war will be the only solution and thats fine. But like i don't want it to be the only solution 100% of the time.
And the cultural factor in civ3 today doesn't cut it as a way to hurt your enemies unless you want to wait half the game for maybe 3 cities culture flipping.

All up just hope they come up with some viable pathways to win and be powerful without necessarily having to have fired a shot.
Like lets take Japan for example. They are quite powerful today and wield a lot of unseen influence because of their economic strength. Although not so much now due to the "constant recession" that economy seems to be plagued with. But earlier yes Japan had immense power than had little to do with its military.

EDIT:::
I almost forgot. I guess what i'm looking forward to at its core is the promise of being able to be a TRUE puppet master in civ.
Being able to mould the world and shape world events behind closed doors without having to go around and shoot at people.
Like AMerica does a lot of the whole puppet master stuff today. And yes they do wield and use pointy sticks too but most of america's power is behind closed doors, unseen.
I would love civ4 to be Bipolar orientated.
1. You could just be flat out warmonger and everybody knows what your about and it has its benefits.
or
2. You could be very stealthy behind the scenes guy that can make REAL changes to world events (not poor sloppy essentially useless changes), and it also has its advantages over option 1.

But ultimately players learn that a combo of 1+2 is best mostly.

In civ3 all option 2 stuff is mainly in our heads or bent around a game engine not necessarily designed for option 2.

 

[troytheface]

yes there should be a destroy the whole world option- kinda like the russians thought of making - a giant oil tanker size ship with a giant nuke inside that if set off would blow a hole in the ocean and wipe out the earth with the wave - if ur behind and don't want those other #$#$%%^ to win i say - build a giant nuke option!

 

[Corvex]

I like these suggestions. I, for one, am not a great fan of war-mongering, but the truth is that the design of the game gives me very little choice. Give me an option for real subterfuge! And the should improve diplomatic and cultural victories and introduce options for economic and scientific domination as well.

 

[Sullla]

Civ3 does reward trading; if you get stuck out of the trading loop on the higher difficulties, you'll rapidly find yourself far behind the other civs. And it's entirely possible to win games even on the highest levels by being peaceful; if you don't believe me, try reading this or this or (although not a complete victory) this.

The problem is just that Civ3 rewards war and aggression much MORE than it rewards peace. That's the thing that will have to be addressed in the making of Civ4.

 

[dh_epic]

The problem isn't whether it's POSSIBLE to win at the higher difficulties while keeping conquering to a minimum. Of course it is.

The problem is that war makes all things possible. The problem is that there's no incentive for peace. The problem is that any strategy you can think of for peaceful victory becomes much much easier if you add a lot of war. The space ship becomes easier to achieve if you have loads of cities. Same thing with culture. Even trade is something that is seldom impeded by war.

 

[dexters]

The problem in Civ3 is that the peaceful victory rewards you for what you don't do - agression. And the UN vote itself is relatively easy to exploit and is too shallow. What a peaceful way needs to reward players has to be a 'history' of good behavior, including alliance building, keeping the peace, and generally doing the opposite of what a warmonger does, which is to conquer. Thus fighting warmongers might even be a way to 'score' the peaceniks. Absence of a conquests and war can't be the only condition.

Other 'peaceful' ways to win including the Space Ship launch is too open to warmongers. A warmonger can launch just as well as a peacenik, in fact, the warmonger may have an advantage by destroying competiting spaceships so that even if their economy isn't as productive as a builder's economy, they'll still be able to launch.

I think what is needed in Civ4 is a stronger diplomatic system that allows for alliance victorys (think of Axis v. Allies) and I mean alliances in terms of ones that form inside a game, not a locked alliance 'team' play that was introduced in Civ3. A better diplomacy system would also mean the UN would be more useful as a tool for a builder to exert power, perhaps even to punish warmonger rivals.

 

[rschissler]

The problem with promoting the cultural aspects of the game is: what can the game developers do to make winning by culture more interesting and engaging? The appeal of warmongering is the strategy and challenge of moving a balance of military units and then countering the AI's moves. Where's the excitement in: okay build a cathedral, now build a university? Unfortunately, I don't find myself getting that excited when I see one or two more happy faces in my cities, or when my tech research goes up a little bit. If there was something more you could actually do with these buildings, that would be great, but what could that be?

 

[dh_epic]

On the allied victory thing...

This is something that has potential. But it would be open to exploits. Imagine you just entered a game and everyone joined up, and everyone won. Or even 90% of people joined up, and the last 1 or 2 civs got screwed. It's very open to collusion. Also, it would need to be balanced in a way that it was about the same difficulty to achieve as a single player victory. If it were too hard, warmongers would prosper. Too easy, and the game begins to fall apart.

On culture...

I think this one needs to start with a transmission model. But with or without that, there needs to be more tangible benefits to boosting your culture. Right now you only get the occasional city flip (which needs to be rebalanced), and cultural victory looms in the distance. Borders are not enough of a short term benefit.

Domination gets you lots of benefits in the short term -- a city, a production center, a cultural center, an economic center, new buildings, wonders, workers, artillery units, gold, and more technology and units upon a surrender. ... and that's before you factor in its ability to get you closer to a domination victory, cultural victory, AND space race victory.

If having a great culture produced more short term benefits, there would be more reason to pursue it. ... but I still maintain that it should involve more than making buildings -- hence a transmission model of culture.

 

[Che Guava]

I see a lot of good options here for avoiding constant warfare. I was wondering if maybe civ IV could see a shift in focus as time goes on. For example, in the earliest stages of the game (bronze/iron ages) war is the most profitable way to go, conquer, carve out an empire, be an island. As the middle ages dawn, wars become less profitable as the risk of isolation grows. Here competing by culture becomes the main thrust of your activities as your way of life permeates into your neighbors cities and allows your civilization more growth, occasionally interrupted by wars between civilizations for strategic points on the map. Finally, by the modern ages, borders are well defined, citizens are unlikely to be ruled by foreign powers for long (asuming equally powerful cultures) and economics/trade becomes the name of the game. By this time, nations are so tied into complex international economies that interuption by war could cause a complete collapse of a nation's economy/society. Wars are brief, citizens are unhappy with them, and peace is upheld at all cost....

 

[dexters]

On the allied victory thing...

This is something that has potential. But it would be open to exploits. Imagine you just entered a game and everyone joined up, and everyone won. Or even 90% of people joined up, and the last 1 or 2 civs got screwed. It's very open to collusion. Also, it would need to be balanced in a way that it was about the same difficulty to achieve as a single player victory. If it were too hard, warmongers would prosper. Too easy, and the game begins to fall apart.

Allied victory is already a functioning feature in very similar game like GalCiv and would be a great addition to the 1 player game. The AI would have to be able to handle it of course.

 

[Graadiapolistan]

I see a lot of good options here for avoiding constant warfare. I was wondering if maybe civ IV could see a shift in focus as time goes on. For example, in the earliest stages of the game (bronze/iron ages) war is the most profitable way to go, conquer, carve out an empire, be an island. As the middle ages dawn, wars become less profitable as the risk of isolation grows. Here competing by culture becomes the main thrust of your activities as your way of life permeates into your neighbors cities and allows your civilization more growth, occasionally interrupted by wars between civilizations for strategic points on the map. Finally, by the modern ages, borders are well defined, citizens are unlikely to be ruled by foreign powers for long (asuming equally powerful cultures) and economics/trade becomes the name of the game. By this time, nations are so tied into complex international economies that interuption by war could cause a complete collapse of a nation's economy/society. Wars are brief, citizens are unhappy with them, and peace is upheld at all cost....

Midieval times were the bloodiest times in world history in europe. There were empires that maintained power by influence ex. the Greeks